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In recent years, animal cruelty has stirred into the limelight as society has given the issue further consideration. State and federal laws as well as the establishment of diverse non-governmental organizations exist to abate animal cruelty, but such institutions have lagged in creating effective control mechanisms in spite of the growth of this modern day pandemic. This thesis will discuss animal cruelty, the types of cruelty, legislative developments, correlation of animal cruelty to violence among humans, and ways to strengthen control mechanisms. Credible findings have indicated a propensity for offenders of animal cruelty to escalate their acts of violence towards a human. Although animal cruelty has made a modest impression on society, a significant segment of our population nevertheless shares the belief that animals are property lacking a holistic set of basic rights, which in turn perpetuates egregious forms of abuse towards animals. Said abuses will be thoroughly reviewed in this thesis with the intent of bringing a collective consciousness to the reader of the extensive types of abuses animals are subjugated to by some of the most heinous offenders. Then, a discussion will proceed of the hoisting impact animal cruelty has in galvanizing violence towards humans. By meticulously analyzing a variety of empirical research showing the overarching effects of animal cruelty as well as by analyzing state and federal laws that have been hindered tepid enforcement control mechanisms over the years, this thesis will argue for an overhaul of enforcement mechanisms so as to cause broader circumvention of animal cruelty. While research shows that there has been a growth in awareness by another significant segment of the population as to gravity of the situation dealing with the mistreatment of animals in our society, there still remains insufficient societal awareness and governmental power to abundantly curtail this imminent problem. Only when society is enlightened with the dangers of animal cruelty and how it can have dire undulating effects within the community, will substantial advancements be made to give animals the wide spectrum of rights they deserve. After conveying the societal necessity for change in constructively protecting animals, a discussion will ensue on the inadequacy of animal laws today. Then, a discussion will proceed on ways to strengthen animal rights in a manner that is reflective of the general cultural norms and values in this modern age. It is the intent of this thesis to affect change and begin a constructive discourse in society of how to mend the preceding errors of prior generations when dealing with animal abuse. While for a significant segment of the population the merit of such argumentation may rest solely in the notion that animals deserve certain basic rights, this thesis widens the purview of consciousness with the empirically-proven affirmation that animal violence can potentially lead to attacks against humans by people who progressively engage in anti-social acts. Thus, the nexus between admonishable violent acts and sanctionable criminal acts is intrinsically intertwined in the notion that animal abuse is a potential precursor to human abuse. In this light, even that segment of the population apathetic towards the plight of animals may not refute the importance of impugning any and all admonishable violent acts against animals into the realm of punitive criminal sanctions orchestrated by a governmental body empowered with seeking the common good--for to otherwise refute animal rights through this newly-endowed lens would be to refute human rights as well.

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Additionally, images of animals alone immediately increased attitudes regarding treatment of animals. This difference does not appear to increase further over time. Images of animals alone appear to aid in immediately altering individuals' sense of continuity with animals. The attitude that animals and humans share some commonalities and exist in relation to each other could assist in adoption campaigns by allowing the potential owners to place themselves with the animals they are adopting. However, over time information combined with images of humans and animals significantly increase this sense of commonality. The applications for the results depend on what type of attitude one desires to change and how soon the change has to occur. The present research reveals that images appear to affect attitude change regarding companion animals and the way they are treated more than text information.; Companion animals now serve as more than tools for human use, they have become family. Many individuals now spend increasingly more money on animals than in years past and are more likely to acknowledge the animal as a family member. With this change in roles many humans have become more empathetic to animal cruelty. Studies have been conducted to examine various aspects of animal cruelty and how it relates to humans. However, few have examined attitude change regarding animal abuse. If attitudes can be positively changed in adults, these individuals are in a position to pass the information onto their children. Adults are also currently in the position to make changes in legislature regarding humane treatment of animals. An experiment was conducted which examined adults' attitudes toward animal abuse and whether they can be changed. Text information was examined as a variable for attitude change. Additionally visual aids in the form of photographs were used in conjunction with and separate from the text information as variables. Two types of photographs were used: images of companion animals by themselves or the same animals accompanied by adult humans. The text information used was adapted from an ASPCA presentation obtained, with permission, from the Orange County ASPCA. The power point presentation included information on the connection between animal violence and violence toward humans, how to help stop animal cruelty and how to report it. Six conditions were created using the three variables. It was found that pictures have an immediate effect on attitude change and information affects individuals in certain measures but not others. On all measures, images had more of an effect than information alone. Only when the text was accompanied by a picture, did it produce a significant change. Attitudes regarding the treatment of animals saw an immediate increase in both conditions in which images of humans and animals were present.

The current study examines the association of macro-level economic factors and the creation or enactment animal cruelty laws across the states at a fixed time. Criminologists have postulated that economic factors influence the legal system (Chambliss and Seidman, 1971). This thesis addresses whether state-level economic and related macro-level factors influences the amount and types of state animal cruelty legislation lawmakers enact. To do so, this thesis examined animal cruelty legislation and their association with measures of agricultural and farm production, Democratic Party, Republican Party, and pro-animal interest groups across all states of the United States for the time period (2012-2013). Findings suggested that three out of the four variables had significant relationships. The Democratic Party had the strongest relationship, but only Animal interests groups had a significant positive relationship. In all, this study explores how economic influence can influence the creation of animal cruelty legislation. Furthermore, the study opened up theoretical methods for more comprehensive analyses on the creation of law.

Despite a growing increase in popularity of human-animal interaction research, there remains a lack of understanding of the reasons why children are cruel to animals and whether early intervention is effective in preventing cruelty and neglect. The aims of this thesis were to deepen our understanding of the psychology of child-animal interactions, and to test whether targeted educational interventions improve the mechanisms which underlie these interactions. A review of the literature found that current research is heavily biased towards the positive impact of animals, identifying a need for more research into the complex web of psychological factors that impact these relationships. The systematic review included in this thesis provides the first narrative meta-synthesis of empirical research on the psychological risk factors for childhood animal cruelty and highlights a decrease in publications over more recent years, as well as a lack of high quality research. Studies have largely overlooked the fact that most cruelty in childhood is unmotivated and accidental and so further research is essential to understand how to prevent different types of childhood animal cruelty. Three studies investigated the fundamental mechanisms that underlie child-animal interactions, focusing on attachment to pets, beliefs about animal minds, and attitudes towards animal cruelty. These studies highlighted the importance of teaching children about animal sentience through education, and that educational interventions should focus on preventing unmotivated cruelty and neglect in the general population. Animal welfare education aims to promote positive relationships between children and animals, thus preventing cruelty. However, few scientific evaluations of these programs exist. This thesis evaluates a cruelty prevention education programme, 'Prevention through Education', developed by the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Knowledge, attachment to pets, attitudes towards animals, attitudes towards animal cruelty, compassion towards animals, reported humane behaviour, and beliefs about animal minds were assessed at pre-test, post-test, and delayed post-test using a self-report questionnaire, comparing test schools to control schools. The questionnaire was administered to 1,217 Scottish children aged 6 to 13 years. The results found that cognitive factors were influenced by the intervention, but affective factors were more resistant to change. A novel cruelty prevention iPad game that was theoretically driven and evidence based, was designed, developed and evaluated. The evaluation involved a pre-test, post-test, test-control design using a self-report questionnaire with 184 primary-school children in Scotland, UK. The results indicated a positive impact of the game on increasing knowledge about animal welfare needs and appropriate and safe behaviour towards pets, increasing children's beliefs about pet minds, and decreasing acceptance of cruelty to pets. The intervention had no impact on compassion. This study demonstrates the potential of developing interactive iPad games to promote cognitive dimensions of positive child-animal interactions. This thesis highlights the importance of evidence-based animal welfare education for early prevention of animal cruelty, and the potential of computer game-based learning to promote positive child-animal interactions. This thesis further addresses major gaps in psychological research and deepens our understanding of how to prevent animal cruelty and neglect. The findings have implications for practice and policy and will impact upon the educational strategies of organisations wishing to develop early prevention strategies.

Despite growing academic interest in the human–animal relationship, little research has been directed toward the political regulation of animal treatment. Even less attention has been accorded to the emergence of the long dominant paradigm in this policy area, namely, the ideology of animal welfare. This book attempts to address this gap by chronicling the early history of animal politics in Sweden with the aim of producing a critical, deconstructive genealogy of animal cruelty and animal welfare. The study ranges from the first political debates about animal cruelty in 1844 to the institution of Sweden’s first comprehensive animal protection act in 1944. Taking a post-Marxist and psychoanalytically informed approach to discourse analysis, the study focuses on how the “problem” of animal cruelty was articulated in the parliamentary debates and government documents throughout the period: What was the problem of animal (mis)treatment represented to be? What kinds of animal (ab)use were rendered uncontroversial? What kind of affective investments and ideological fantasies underpinned these discursive constructions, and how did the problematizations change over time? The book contains six empirical chapters that deal with the most important legal revisions in the period as well as the parallel debates about animal experimentation and slaughter. Two major discursive regimes—an early “anti-cruelty regime” and a later “animal welfare regime”—are identified in the material, and the transition between them is theorized in terms of discursive antagonism and dislocation. Focusing on the conflict between competing discursive logics, the study charts a century of ideological struggles through which our modern attitudes toward animals were born. The book also offers a critical reinterpretation of the success story of animal welfare. Against the assumption that modern animal welfarism progressively grew out of the preceding anti-cruelty regime, the central claim of this book is that the “welfarist turn” that took place in the 1930s and 1940s also functioned to re-entrench society’s speciesist values and de-problematize the exploitation of animals for human purposes.

While public opinion and previous research on the emergence of the first comprehensive animal welfare law in Sweden in 1944 has regarded it as a natural development of the animal welfare debates around the turn of the century, new research on the subject has problematized this view, instead pointing out the law of 1944 as a discursive break, in which the “animal welfare regime” emerged out of the previous “anti-cruelty regime”. This study focuses on the period of time after this break, from 1944 to 1973, examining this relatively unexplored part of Swedish animal welfare history by turning to the parliamentary debates of the time and looking at which practices were problematized and on which grounds, as well as how the line was drawn between acceptable animal use and unacceptable animal (ab)use. In doing so the study aims to explore the consequences of the aforementioned break in Swedish political discourse. The main argument of the study is that while the debates might seem to be about animal welfare, the main issue was in fact often not animals but humans, and differing conceptions of who was truly a “friend of the animals”, as opposed to a primitive, uncultured, brute. Human animal use as such was thus never questioned, instead the focus lay on specific practices such as recreational hunting and factory farming. In trying to draw a line between these practices, the members of parliament critical of the current state of affairs employed arguments which, inadvertently, could be interpreted as an attack on human animal use as such. In doing so, they activated the discursive mechanisms of control of the animal welfare regime, one of which the study identifies as a reversal of the logic of equivalence used by the reformist members of parliament before 1944.

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Diploma thesis - Legal regulation of protection of farm animals against cruelty This diploma thesis on Legal regulation of protection of farm animals against cruelty divides into five chapters (excluding the introduction and conclusion). The first chapter explains the relevant terminology. The second chapter concentrates on history of animal rights and philosophical aspects of these rights as well as on animals as subjects of law. The following chapters focus on applicable relevant legislation. The third chapter deals with international animal welfare agreements and relevant EU legislation. The fourth, most important, chapter summarizes the legislation on the protection of farm animals against maltreatment in the legal order of the Czech Republic. This chapter gradually focuses on both public and private law. Finally, the fifth chapter brings a comparison of the domestic legislation on the protection of farm animals against cruelty with the legislation of the Hellenic Republic.